Ben’s review of HSAFM (with Loren Picco and Merv Miles, Ben’s second supervisor, from the Nanophysics and Soft Matter group in the School of Physics) has been accepted for publication in Small. More to follow soon! Congratulations!
Ben has just returned from visiting Prof. Gregory Salamo and Dr. Michael Hawkridge at the Arkansas Nano-Bio Materials Characterization Facility, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA.
He made use of their X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) equipment, which provided information about the atomic composition of his films with approx 10 µm resolution (X-Y) and sub-10nm resolution (Z). The XPS experiments allowed him to characterise any chemical changes that may take place in his film to result in the changes in conductivity observed.
Ben travelled to the US with Dr. Loren Picco, a colleague in the Nanophysics group in Bristol, and the trip was funded by an EPSRC “Building Global Engagements” grant. Loren specialises in high-speed AFM (HSAFM) and was visiting Arkansas to help them set up a high-speed AFM to be based in the Nano-Bio Materials Characterization Facility
Prof Pete Skabara, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Materials Chemistry C and based at the University of Strathclyde, visited the FRG and the School of Chemistry today.
He gave an excellent lecture (preceded by talks by Geri Echue (FRG) and Huibin Qiu (Manners group) as part of the Inorganic and Materials Chemistry Section seminar series.
The final paper from Rumman’s efforts (during his PhD and one-year postdoc here in Bristol) appeared in the latest edition of JACS! This output forms part of a very fruitful collaboration between the Faul and Manners research groups.
The use of ionic self-assembly to access non-conventional block copolymer morphologies, including tetragonal and helical structures, from a combination of polyferrocenylsilane diblock copolymer polyelectrolytes and AOT-based surfactants, is described in the communication. Congratulations to all involved!
February seems to be the month of international travel! Angel has just gone to UCLA (see his post below), Saravanan is spending a week in Grenoble with our collaborator Dr Patrice Rannou, and Ben Brown is heading off to Arkansas next week for some XPS studies. Enjoy!
The year has started on a high note with a large delegation (>100) from Kyoto University visiting Bristol on the 10th and 11th of January. A number of parallel sessions are being held across campus, actively investigating opportunities for further collaboration. Charl is actively involved in the Materials Chemistry sessions.
Read this University of Bristol news article here for more details.
Seven group members (Feli, Saravanan, Angel, Alex, James, Ben and Charl) are attending Elecmol ’12 in Grenoble, France (with 6 posters and 1 oral presentation!). This exciting event, co-organised by our close collaborator Dr Patrice Rannou, has been a very good way of experiencing good science (and some good food!).
The event is held at Minatec’s conference facility in Grenoble.
At the end of a beautiful and sunny day in Bristol … a beautiful sunset, as seen from the Royal Fort Gardens on campus!
Terry McMaster (Director, BCFN) and Charl (in his role as member of the management committee of the BCFN) attended a PhD Recruitment Workshop in Beijing, China (23-24th of November). Although very short, it was a very successful trip, with lots of contact with excellent (prospective) students!
Beijing was cold, but gloriously sunny! It was a real pleasure to visit Beijing again!
Faul Research Group 